It seems that the suspended Brazilian President’s troubles are not going away any time soon. This is after a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice approved fresh investigations to take place.
According to a court spokesperson the new investigations are meant to find out if President Dilma Rousseff did indeed obstruct justice when there was a probe on major corruption taking place in the country’s state oil company. The decision by Justice Teori Zavascki means that Ms Rousseff will now be the person of interest of the corruption scandal known to Brazilians as the Operation Car Wash.
As if that is not enough, Rousseff is currently facing impeachment in a case where she is suspected to have had a hand in the mismanagement of the national budget; something which she has totally denied. Her spokesperson confirmed that Ms Rousseff will testify in her defense in the last phase of her impeachment in the Senate. Her administration has stated that they are confident that the truth will prevail and that the probe findings will reveal that there was no such thing as an obstruction of justice.
According to the prosecutors, the oil producer, PetroleoBrasileiro SA Petrobras (ADR)(NYSE:PBR) was the milk cow for many politicians and business people. This saw them siphon billions of dollars some which were most for kickbacks and bid rigging. Legal experts say that if Ms Rousseff is found guilty then she will not face severe consequences. This is because in Brazil, judges don’t view obstruction of justice as a
Her probe is done under complete secrecy.
Early in May this year, the trouble loaded president said that she would sue Senator Delcidio Amaral. Senator Amaral had said that the president had been aware of what was going wrong and instead of making it right she even went ahead to interfere with investigations. In response Ms. Rousseff said she would sue the senator for defamation.
The Petrobas scandal is all about company executives who allegedly paid politicians for contracts with kickbacks amounting to $1.6 billion. There is no direct evidence implicating Ms Rousseff but the fact that most of these illegal payments occurred during her tenure as the head of board of director is what is suspicious.
